Steven Voehl's Podcast

Friday, December 3, 2010

The End Approaches!

The end of the semester is quickly approaching for the two courses that I am currently taking, Introduction to Educational Technology and Introduction to Authoring Tools. The semester has gone fast, but taking two courses on top of taking care of family and teaching duties has been a challenge. Tomorrow, I have my last classes before I complete my final reflective posts to the discussion boards. I am eager to find out what my instructors thought of my final projects.

Already, I am trying to apply what I have learned in these two courses to my instruction in the classroom. In fact, my final projects have been geared toward what I can use in my school. I had a professional development day in the high school today, where the requirements were introduced for all classes in the school to do a formal research project. Both I and a colleague introduced the notion to our administration of doing digital technology projects in the lower grades as a way of building the research skills that will be required of all students as juniors and seniors when they can then complete formal papers. Additionally, our principle has approached me about performing podcasting training for all teachers on the next professional development day.

I am very excited and geared up about what I have been learning. It is great to study material that can immediately make an impact on the job in the classroom. I can actually say that everything that I have learned about blogs, wikis, websites, audio remix, digital storytelling, video remix and copyright I have already applied to conversations that I have had in school with my colleagues with the notion of introducing these type of projects in the coming semester in my classroom.